The provocative anti-Israel posture of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the AKP firebrand, appears to have lost some favor within Turkey itself. But how about among the two and a half million Turkish immigrants and their descendants in Germany? Could Turkish Muslims in Western Europe, under AKP influence, become a major, new focus of radicalism?

Nine hundred mosques in Germany are controlled by a branch of the Turkish government, the DITIB or Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs, which serves the Diyanet, Turkey’s state Islamic administration. Through the Diyanet and DITIB, Turkey finances the construction and maintenance of mosques in Western Europe, and trains and employs their imams. The Diyanet and DITIB also set the curriculum and pay for teachers delivering classes on Islam in the public schools of three German states. (Clerics brought from Turkey to Germany by the Diyanet and DITIB are frequently criticized for failing to learn German adequately and thereby obstructing the integration of their students.)